The Pirate Review - Ecology: Separating Fact from Fiction

What are the ecological facts of life, anyway? These days it's hard to tell

My thoughts on the topic of ecology are not currently in vogue. Perhaps an editorial on the ecological facts would have been simpler to write thirty or even twenty years ago, when there were less environmental impact studies to draw upon, but the data in those studies were more rigorously tested and thus more reliable. However, in the last twenty years, even the merits of some outwardly scientific studies have become debatable. Certain types of environmentalists--herein called "environmental activists"--have become increasingly strident and insistent that mundane human activities will presently cause catastrophic changes to the biosphere, despite a lack of hard evidence in their favor. Over time, such pronouncements have been accepted as fact; even biology and environmental science texts contain articles with a decidedly activist slant. News outlets increasingly fail to discriminate between rigorous ecological studies with excellent methodologies, and pseudo-studies with a specific agenda and questionable experimental designs. Therefore, unless one has the ability to detect logical fallacies and the patience to personally verify scientific research, it has become difficult or impossible to separate the ecological facts of life from ecological deception.

One need not look far afield to find examples of estimates whose accuracy and veracity may be called into question. The syllabus for the Biology 100 class I took during Spring Term 2004 contained just such an example. The syllabus quoted G.T. Miller, Jr. as stating that a typical tree provides $196,250 worth of ecological benefits in a fifty-year lifespan, while cutting down the same tree and selling it as timber provides only about $590. I am no logician, but it is not particularly challenging to poke holes in this argument. Miller suggests that, much like the goose that laid the golden eggs, all trees are worth much more living than dead, but this is true only in the most nebulously collective sense. No single person or organization receives the hypothetical sum of $196,250 in cash or equivalent tangible benefit from a living tree, whereas the lumber company which fells and sells the tree receives $590 or more in real revenue. Further, Miller describes the "real costs" of his typical tree based on the assumption that a felled tree is never replaced. I am sure that Weyerhaeuser, one of the world's largest paper companies, would take issue with this argument. Since it depends on healthy forests for its continued livelihood, Weyerhaeuser recognizes that trees are both an ecological necessity and a renewable resource, and the company has become a leader in the reforesting movement in both the U.S. and Canada. I must also point out a slight hypocrisy on Miller's part, since his own 848-page hardcover text Living in the Environment is not currently available in a forest-friendly electronic format. Certainly the author could have chosen a more ecologically sound distribution method, as his publisher Brooks/Cole provides, among other services, the Blackboard online education service which our Biology 100 class also used. However, for reasons of his own, Miller chose to provide only a "dead-tree" version of his text. Human beings do harvest trees for a purpose, even if that purpose is to print a book decrying the practice of harvesting trees.

An increase in environmental activism has, in recent years, only created further doubt and confusion for the serious student of ecology and environmental studies. This is at least in part because activists, far from providing a united front based on responsible reporting of actual environmental issues, tend to latch onto the most recent environmental cause du jour and blow it completely out of proportion. Thus, in the early 1970s, environmental activists were issuing dire warnings against global cooling, population explosions and food shortages, leading to the destruction of civilization by the mid-1980s. I was a teenager in the '80s--and despite the questionable popularity of Prince, Cabbage Patch dolls, Day-Glo sweatshirts and pegged pants, civilization as we know it did not come to an end. Nor, based on my current weight, was I ever in any serious danger of starving to death. However, complete inaccuracy in predicting the future does not seem to have cowed or even daunted environmental activists. Instead, the new warnings are simply against different dangers--global warming, human contributions to the carbon cycle, pesticide poisoning and disastrous climate change.

Based on personal experience and data from reliable studies, I recognize that human beings are not living up to their potential when it comes to the responsible use and care of God's creations. However, I do not believe there is wisdom in trying to create positive change by frightening people to death. The computer software industry has a term that seems particularly applicable to the tactics of environmental activism: FUD, an acronym that stands for "fear, uncertainty and doubt." When a company cannot show that its upcoming product is better than those of its competitors, and when it fears it will lose customers before the product is released, spreading FUD about the competition becomes a common strategy. Using disinformation as a weapon is a dishonest tactic, but in the short run it often does the job. Likewise, activists may not be able to provide evidence that the death of human civilization is imminent, but that does not keep them from attempting to befuddle and frighten the public into submission in every available forum--from print journalism to television to the Internet to Hollywood films such as the eco-disaster tale The Day After Tomorrow. If you cannot convince people with facts, it is apparently acceptable to terrorize them with FUD.

Practically everyone wants to do the right thing for the environment. But before one can do the right thing, one must first understand what it is. Current trends in environmental activism only serve to obfuscate and distort the actual, important messages that should be getting through to the public, business interests, and government. The result has been chaos, confusion and skepticism--not the best ingredients to create a better, more ecologically sound world.